USATODAY tells the new marijuana business story

USATODAY (April 8, 2013) tells the story of young investors from Silicon Valley and elsewhere looking into the potential profits from legal marijuana. Essentially retells the FORTUNE story blogged about earlier.

Marijuana businesses highlighted on cover of FORTUNE

The cover story of FORTUNE (April 8, 2013) is "Marijuana, Inc., Meet the Entrepreneurs and Investors Firing Up a New Industry" by Roger Parloff (pp.66-73), posted on-line as "Yes we cannabis." (The full story is only available to subscribers.)

Marijuana prohibition is a house of cards and the first two cards just got pulled out [legalization votes in Colorado and Washington in November 2012]. When the public, investors, politicians, and business community saw that, the entire conversation changed,

said Troy Dayton, CEO of ArcView Angel Network, which is the focus of the article. Dayton's partner is Steve DeAngelo, the proprietor of the highly regarded medical marijuana dispensary, Harborside Health Center in Oakland, CA. Dayton and DeAngelo's network brings together investors and entrepreneurs looking for funding at quarterly meetings that might be considered a cannabis business version of the ABC-TV reality program, "Shark Tank."

Dayton adds,

Business is the most powerful platform for political change that's ever existed. When there is money for government, money for investors, money for entrepreneurs, and benefits to communities, that's a powerful incentive for change.

Participants include investment firm MC Advisors, created by John Sperling, the founder of the for-profit University of Phoenix, who has been a major financial backer of marijuana law reform initiatives. A firm invested in by MC Advisors is a medical cannabis consulting firm, 4Front Advisors, run by Kris Krane, who participates in the Network.

CNNMoney.com has a short video of one of the profiled businesses, "Uptoke," a portable vaporizer.